


Missing Girls

by Nevanna



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Experimentation, Gen, Manipulation, Medical Experimentation, Pre-Season/Series 01, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 05:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13874025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: The doctors want to find out more about Kali's abilities.





	Missing Girls

**Author's Note:**

> This story fills the "vignette" square for Ladies Bingo. Please consider yourselves warned for potentially upsetting medical imagery, and the generally upsetting circumstances of Jane and Kali's childhood.

The other girl’s hands are smaller and paler than mine, but our fingers fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. 

The doctors give us puzzles sometimes. They measure how long it takes us to snap the pieces together or pull them apart, and they write down the results on their clipboards. When they talk over our heads about us, they name us by the numbers on our wrists. 

When they think that I can’t hear, they talk about what happened to the other numbers, the subjects that “did not thrive” as we have. More than once, they draw slicing lines across their foreheads.

One of the doctors talks to us more than the others. “That’s very good, Eleven,” he says to the other girl when she lifts a mug in the air from across the room. “Now put it back down, gently.”

His name is Brenner, but he wants us to call him “Papa.” 

If she ever had another name, she doesn’t know what it is. I whisper mine every night, over and over, to make sure I don’t forget it.

Today, Eleven and I are seated across from each other at one of the laboratory tables. My feet touch the floor, but hers swing in the air. She smiles at me. I wonder if they’re going to bring us another puzzle.

When I ask, Dr. Brenner smiles and tells me that we’re playing a different game today. He whispers the rules in my ear, and the punishments for breaking them. “We want to you to be a good girl,” he says softly. “We want to thrive, where so many others didn’t.” I shiver, because I know what happened to the ones who _did not thrive,_ and he pats my shoulder. “Let’s find out what you can do,” he says.

I know that when Eleven cries, I can fill my mind with pictures of flowers and birds, of sunsets and the sound of the wind, and push them into her head, until her sobs slow and she falls asleep in my arms.

I know that I can make the adults see things, hear things, even taste things, that aren’t really there.

I know that what Dr. Brenner asks me to do today is more of the same.

Isn’t it?

I search for the fears that float within Eleven’s mind: the needles, the tanks, the knife slicing into her brain. I drag them to the surface, and when I open my eyes, her fists are clenched. She strains against the bonds that only she can feel. 

The lights flicker. The table rattles. My chair shifts under me.

“Stop!” she screams. I taught her that word. “Stop! Stop!”

I stop.

Eleven knocks over her chair when she tries to run, but Dr. Brenner catches her in his arms. He holds her close and runs a hand over her scalp. “It’s all right,” he murmurs. “Papa’s here.”

“It was just a bad dream,” I say, and he glares at me. That’s what my real parents, in my old life, used to say to me when I woke in the night, but those words weren’t part of his instructions.

Neither were the words, _I’m sorry_.

Eleven’s eyes find my face. “Bad dream?” she repeats.

I nod. I say, “It’s over now,” but I look at Dr. Brenner’s face and think, _Maybe it’s not_.


End file.
